LARS VON TRIER
Nymphomaniac Vols I & II
Story and plot disasters - warning Spoiler Alerts and then some!
Will we ever see the director’s five and a half hour plus cut? Would it help the story?! Possibly not . . . .
Parts of Vol I are absolutely radiant as in the part Skarsgård's character Seligman explains how and why he feels Bach perfected polyphony, Jo uses this example to talk about three lovers leading up to her "cantus firmus" Genius!
Also the Russian icon story is sheer brilliance - the whore of Babylon and Valeria Messalina!! Amazing! And the child Jo’s first spontaneous orgasm! A visionary moment and key explanation to her pathology of nymphomania! Truly visionary.
Most gaffes and clumsy story telling is in Vol II
The ending!?
Now this is where I fall out with the story most fiercely! Why would he return to the room to have sex with her? He is asexual! Better to leave the denouement hanging on her turning to the wall in safety and having told him her entire story for once in her life as he is non threatening non-sexual and just fade to darkness and I would have been happy and feel we had explored the non-erotic and lack of pornographic sense people were expecting. I'm a sucker for a happy ending and it deserved one IMHO. As Stacy, I think, explains if you are expecting erotica you will be VERY disappointed! It is NOT erotic or even porno! The truth of nymphomania and priapism that are desperately clinically sad and fearfully horrible!
The gun shot is to a blank screen. Why? Dreadful ending. Gratuitous. Makes him just the same as everyone else. Trying to have sex with her! He doesn’t have an erection?! So why? Why would she have shot him given her blankness regarding the sexual act by now she is merely reduced to an unfeeling vessel? Because someone finally listened to her? The pathetic flaccid penis is a joke and thus he wouldn’t have wanted sex with her. He just wouldn’t have! Very VERY disappointing. Clichéd!
Finding her own tree soul/spirit like her father introduced her to as a tale is clumsy and a highly laboured sentimental scene. Hopelessly different like a French romantic fiction!? Dreadful
The scene as to who beats her up is awful. Jerome (now played by someone else!? - Michael Pas - why?) and her pupil ‘mentor’ (Mia Goth) are the only people to have ever loved her! They both turn against her in an instant at whim, with no real set up and they abuse her. They we are expected to believe having started a relationship when her mentee is sent extorting debts from him!!! Ludicrous! Awful lead into the ending! We are seemingly being lead to her more mature understanding and realisation that love will save her from the impersonal mechanical sex act and consequent addiction but no . . . . .
I would have made it the black street gang (allegedly played by ‘porn’ actors) who follow her and seek revenge and beat her up for leaving them! Not I should say because of their colour but their role as street gang they could have been any culture but it is clear they are immigrant as she understand (presumes?) they cannot speak the same language as Jo. They are characters in her fantasy chosen at random from Jo’s window. Is it because they are black? Does she understand why she would need a translator? Why do they argue we are never told? The unconsummated encounter is very odd. Ironic given the black stereotype of excess and always being ready for sex. Is that his point here?
Note:
The area we see where she is beaten up where Seligman finds her is like a stage theatre set! Why? This is quite haunting but it isn’t really explored which seems a shame. It is quite different to anywhere else in the film.
CAST
Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgård, Stacy Martin, Shia LaBeouf, Jamie Bell, Christian Slater, Uma Thurman, Willem Dafoe, Connie Nielsen, Mia Goth, the ubiquitous Udo Kier, Jean-Marc Barr, Caroline Goodall, Kate Ashfield, Saskia Reeves, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Hugo Speer, Felicity Gilbert, Michaël Pas, Jesper Christensen, Jens Albinus, Nicolas Bro, Cyron Melville, Shanti Roney, Omar Shargawi, Tania Carlin, Severin von Hoensbroech, Peter Gilbert Cotton . . . .
Hugo Speer? As Uma Thurman’s character’s philandering husband. Under used and odd casting (both Speer and Defoe are legendary ‘swordsmen’ said to be well endowed - is this some sort if in joke? Is that too crass? Shia LaBeouf says the first casting letter said send a picture of your penis!!!?! So Von Trier can be crass! He says it took him twenty minutes to do so!
Thurman is brilliantly cast of course and plays someone almost unrecognisable as her, lack of make up and plain. Hysterical and out of control. She is brilliant
Jamie Bell? As a hardened sadist - 'K' !? Too young and innocent looking. Why? Character would, like in the Emmanuelle film, be older and more debased tastes! Sophisticated, debauched, jaded. A younger man is not there yet surely? Is that ironic? He seems an uncomfortable fit to me . . . . . His character has no depth or explanation
Charlie Hawkins as boy on the train - Brit actor in Eastenders from 2004-2011!! How did they cast him?
Quite a few Brits are cast from an odd range of sources!
Saskia Reeves the nurse? Why and totally underused? She is a brilliant British actor and has has recently just outshone everyone in a TV play 'US' here opposite Tom Hollander
Kate Ashfield ( Shaun of The Dead!) how did Von Trier cast her? I mean I like her but would love to know why he cast her
Defoe is under used here! Is this actor loyalty or did much end up edited out on the editor's cutting room floor?
Other people too, odd choices although to be fair this seems to be a Von Trier trait.Udo Kier is a stalwart of his ensemble go to crew?!
The DVD interviews with the cast Starsgaard, Gainsbourg (very sensitive and revealing) and especially the young Jo actor, Stacy Martin. Amazing! These interviews helped me a great deal as to the making of the film, prosthetics, the double sets regular and porno!, etc. Really a great addition to the DVD extras.
No comments:
Post a Comment